Питер Мэй - I'll Keep You Safe

Gunn nodded. ‘Come to gloat rather than grieve.’

She looked thoughtful. ‘So where to now?’

‘Dalmore,’ Gunn said. ‘The beach and the cemetery. That’s where they will bury Ruairidh tomorrow.’

The single-track road that led down to the beach descended gently between the hills. Off to their left, sheep that thought Gunn and Braque might be bringing them feed came running down a rough track towards the road. They stopped abruptly in disappointment as the 4×4 carried on by.

The blades of a couple of small wind turbines turned in the wind up on the hillside, and they passed a croft house and outbuildings on their right before descending steeply to the metalled area of car park. Straight ahead the cemetery rose in a gradual slope across the machair to where wooden piles had been driven deep into the sand, delineating the line between cemetery and beach. The erosive nature of the weather, and the sea, had been in danger of eating into the soft sandy soil of the cemetery to spill bones and headstones on to the giant pebbles below.

A sandy track beside a waterway led along the side of the cemetery to the beach itself, and on the far side, set proud on an elevation, stood a newer patch of burial ground where residents commanded an even better view of the beach.

Braque’s heart sank when Gunn retrieved his walking stick from the back seat. Her feet had only just dried out. But the ground he led them on to, beyond the tarmac, was firm and dry and took them on a relatively easy climb towards the top of the cliffs at the north end of the beach.

‘Is it not dangerous for you to be exerting yourself like this?’ she called after him, hoping that he might go slower.

‘Not at all,’ he called over his shoulder, oblivious to the unsuitability of her footwear. ‘The doctor says the more exercise the better.’

When finally they reached the end of their climb, the most spectacular vista opened up below them. A crescent of pale gold arcing away to the south, tide receding in white foam across smooth shiny sand to the sparkling turquoise of water that turned a deep marine as the sand shelved steeply away beneath it.

Accumulated all along the foot of the wooden piles at the innermost curve of the beach were marvellously marbled pebbles the size of dinosaur eggs, rock squeezed into layers during the first days of creation, then worn smooth and rounded by aeons. To be washed up here on this far-flung European outpost, well beyond the reach of what had once been the Roman Empire.

Immediately below them, the ocean foamed fiercely around jagged black rock stacks that rose sheer out of the water and stood stubborn against the relentless power of the Atlantic. The sun flitted intermittently across the sands, and there was not another soul in sight. The rain clouds they had seen in Shawbost were, thus far, biding their time out at sea.

Gunn pointed to the far headland. ‘Just a year or so ago, an oil rig being towed around the Hebrides broke free and washed up at the other end of the beach there. Because of the bad weather it stayed put for quite a while before they managed to tow it away. Brought as many tourists to see it as the beach itself. A huge bloody thing it was.’ And then self-consciously, ‘Begging your pardon Ma’am.’

But Braque had not noticed his lapse of language, and wouldn’t have cared if she had. She was gazing in wonder at the view that filled her eyes. ‘I cannot imagine,’ she said, ‘a more beautiful place to spend eternity.’

‘Personally, Ma’am, I’d rather see it from the perspective of the living than the dead.’

She turned a smile on him. ‘But we are all going to die sometime, Detective Sergeant.’

‘That we are, Ma’am. But some are taken before their time.’

‘Like Ruairidh.’

‘Aye. And others.’ His own gaze turned reflective as he panned it across the beach and cemetery below. ‘The brother that Niamh Macfarlane has gone to meet off the ferry. Uilleam...’ He drew a deep breath. ‘There was no love lost between him and Ruairidh Macfarlane.’

Braque frowned. ‘Love lost?’

He smiled. ‘Sorry. They didn’t like one another very much. And that would be an understatement.’ He snorted. ‘Not that there was much contact between them. Not for a long time, anyway. Uilleam’s been away from the island for years. Based in Dundee, on the east coast of Scotland. A software developer, I’m told, for one of the big online games companies.’

She frowned again. ‘I’m not sure I understand.’

‘Computer games. You know, things like Grand Theft Auto and World of Warcraft . Stuff like that. I’m no expert myself.’ He turned to look at her. ‘I wouldn’t even know what they called Grand Theft Auto in France.’

She shrugged and smiled. ‘ Grand Theft Auto , I believe.’

He grinned. ‘Oh, well, that’s original, then.’ The grin faded. ‘The thing is, Ma’am, I heard this morning that Uilleam was on the island himself earlier this month. It never came to my attention officially at the time, but I understand that he and Ruairidh had a confrontation in McNeill’s bar in Stornoway. A chance meeting apparently, that ended in fists and flying beer glasses. No complaints made, and no arrests, but I gather that Uilleam took a bit of a beating. Ruairidh was a big lad. But it was Uilleam that picked the fight.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘Well, like I said, Ma’am, there was no love lost.’ He turned his eyes back towards the beach. ‘And the seeds of it were sown right here on these sands. Something that happened twenty-five years ago now. And there’s probably not anyone on the island who doesn’t know the story.’

Braque looked at him, intrigued. ‘Tell me.’

Niamh had arrived in Stornoway far too early for the ferry, and spent her time wandering aimlessly around the town, remembering places she had been with Ruairidh, things they had done together. A drunken meal at Digby Chick that had left neither of them in a fit state to drive home. The night subsequently spent at the Royal, making love noisily and keeping the people in the next room awake until they banged on the wall. The day that Ruairidh dropped his iPhone into the inner harbour, trying to photograph curious seals which had swum right up to the pontoons. A first night spent in a room at the luxuriously refurbished Lews Castle that sat up on the hill overlooking the town and harbour below. A new perspective on a familiar place.

The times they had attended HebCelt, drifting from tent to tent in the castle grounds, listening to some of the best Celtic music to be heard anywhere. Or Rock Night in the theatre at the An Lanntair arts centre, a tribute by local musicians to a long line of rock classics.

Moments spent together. Lost now for ever. For while they remained still strong in her recollection, what were memories if not to be shared?

Finally, it was at An Lanntair that she ended up, nursing a coffee at a table with a view over the outer harbour where she could see the ferry as it rounded the point and ploughed its passage across the bay to the pier. The angled silver roof of the terminal building caught moments of fleeting sunshine and more resembled a flying saucer than a ferry terminal.

She could see the Jeep from here, too, where she had left it in the car park, its white roof, like that of the terminal building, flashing intermittently in the sporadic sunlight.

As the time passed so her dread grew. She could not remember now the last time that she had seen Uilleam. Probably at some family funeral, or wedding, where they would not have spoken or even caught each other’s eye. She would have loved him to be the happy-go-lucky protective big brother she remembered from childhood, awkward with girls, taking delight in tormenting his wee sister, along with Anndra. But those memories were tainted now by animus, and the innocents they had once been were long lost.